It is known that industrial production processes, for example in the automotive industry, are often based on a wide range of different shaped types of workpieces which are to be mounted together. Due to the increasing number of variants of the final product, there is also an increased variety in the types of workpieces to be mounted together.
An industrial production can be realized by using industrial robots for the standardized production processes such as gripping a platform for a car to be mounted from a staple and moving it to an assembly area. Industrial robots can be used as manipulators with, for example 5 to 7 degrees of freedom in movement. The robots can perform programmable movements within their working range that includes, for example, a radius of 3 m around a belonging rotary base.
The industrial robots or other manipulators can require a tooling device mounted thereon for securely gripping a workpiece. To handle the high variety of different shaped types of workpieces—such as platforms for cars—it is either possible to handle each type of workpiece with a dedicated gripper tool or to design the tooling device to be as flexible as possible. The required effort for changing the manipulating tool is reduced therewith.
EP1839820 B1 discloses a manipulating device for the handling of workpieces which is foreseen to be mounted on a robot. The workpieces include several operating modules which are stationary mounted on the same carrier unit on their one side and which provide a mounting interface for a gripper tool on their other side. To increase the flexibility of this manipulating device, each mounting interface can be moveable within the working range of the belonging working module independently of each other.
In known systems the working ranges of the operating modules do not overlap. As a result, there is still a significant restriction in the flexibility of the respective manipulating device.